Nov 12, 2011

This funky Frankenstein's monster sculpture looks good enough to eat! Created as part of the It’s Alive Project, this is one of 80 busts created by different artists striving to show the monster in a different light. Look out for the FrankenBieber, and the hilarious Mt. Frankenmore!

Nov 10, 2011

Wildlife photographer Markus Varesvuo snapped this amazing picture of a herring gull attacking an eagle. Gulls often join together to drive predators away from breeding grounds, but sometimes solitary gulls do the dirty work, too. For the greatest impact, they swoop in from above and behind a bird of prey.

Nov 8, 2011

After a picture of the LEGO street painting was posted on Reddit, the Internet took over, making it a sensation online. Created for the Sarasota Chalk Festival in Florida, this amazing mashup of Legos and Terracotta warriors is magnificent in every sense of the word.

What exactly went into creating it? "There were some challenges, starting with translating our first design to a gridded blueprint with the exact right distortions," said Peter Westerink of Planet Streetpainting. "Our next challenge was to copy the blueprint to the pavement, again in the exact right proportions, only 100 times bigger (30 x 40 feet)! Last, but not least, we had to make sure we would finish in time, while answering the questions of the thousands of people that came by daily to see our piece."

Maybe this isn’t a newsflash to anyone but me, but, um, the Moai “heads” on Easter Island have bodies. Because some of the statues are set deep into the ground, and because the heads on the statues are disproportionately large, many people (myself included) tend to think of them as just big heads. But the bodies (generally not including legs, though there is at least one kneeling statue) are there — in many cases, underground. What’s even more interesting — there are petroglyphs (rock markings) that have been preserved below the soil level, where they have been protected from erosion. This research report has been making the rounds; it discusses recent progress by The Easter Island Statue Project to uncover, study, and catalogue two statues.

Nov 4, 2011

What you are looking at here is a cross-section of a blade of marram grass, which is used to stabilize coastal dunes. Fluorescent dye has been added to highlight the internal structures. Those internal structures look happy to see us! Read more about it at Beyond the Human Eye.

This artwork by Grégoire Guillemin contains lots of pop culture icons. How many do you recognize? I didn’t count, but most of them are familiar enough. You can see larger images at Guillemin’s gallery (which contains just a couple of spoilers).

Aug 28, 2011

If Nyan Cat were around in 1988, he would the star of an NES game. And it would be in the bargain bin now. J. R. Baker took this idea and ran with it, designing both the front and back of the game case in the style of Konami games from the ’80s. I love how he included Tacnayn as well. See the expanded art and work in progress at his site.

The super-high pressure of the planet, which orbits a rapidly pulsing neutron star, has likely caused the carbon within it to crystallize into an actual diamond, a new study suggests. Also worth noting, the planet is larger than its sun. With a diameter of about 37,300 miles (60,000 km), the planet is five times the size of Earth, but 3,000 times larger than the millisecond pulsar it orbits. The entire system (PSR J1719-1438) would fit within the diameter of our sun, and is located about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Serpens (The Snake).

Chinese artist Lui Bolin has a unique approach to his art–instead of standing out, he tries his best not to be seen and to blend in. This photo is from his newest installation - it’s called “Plasticizer.” Hard not to admire his ingenuity.

What happens when you combine a Snuggie with a hoodie? You get the Thuggie. It might sound like a joke, but the site is very real and you can absolutely buy your own embarrassingly long sweatshirt if you so please.

It looks like a pizza and is made from a bunch of pizza-flavored ingredients, but it certainly isn’t a pizza and almost definitely tastes nothing like a pizza. This “meta-pizza”is made from Pizza Supreme Doritos, Pizza Pringles, Flavor Blasted Xplosive Pizza Goldfish Crackers, Pepperoni Pizza flavored Combos and Pizza-flavored Tribe hummus. Yummy? I’m not so sure.

Sure Leia was always flirting with Han, but it was easy to see her eyes shooting longing looks of love over to Chewbacca, so it’s not all that surprising to see photographic evidence of their affair being made public all these years later.﻿

I love these fairy tale recreations by artists Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle of Airigami.com. Larry did the actual bending and twisting of the balloons, and Kelly uses Photoshop to alter the images to look more 2D.

Jun 22, 2011

Twenty years ago, Dutch native Johan Huibers had a dream about devastating floods...so he did what any sensible person would do and set out to build a seaworthy ark. It’s 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high - half the size of the Titanic. After three years of work it is near completion and he is stocking it with faux animals. He is hoping to turn the vessel into a tourist attraction and to bring the ark down the Thames River for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

This is a picture of a trash can in Lucerne, Switzerland. The city government wants to discourage littering by drawing attention to public trash cans. So it put down little games, including mazes and hopscotch, around the cans.

Known as keshwa chaca, this is the only remaining example of the Incan handwoven bridges once common in the Incan road system. Made of woven grass, the bridge spans 118 feet and hangs 220 feet above the canyon’s rushing river.

The Incan women braided small, thin ropes, which were then braided again by the men into large support cables, much like a modern steel suspension bridge. Handwoven bridges lasted as long as 500 years and were held in very high regard by the Inca. The punishment for tampering with such a bridge was death.

Over time, however, the bridges decayed, or were removed, leaving this single testament to Incan engineering. This previously sagging bridge was repaired in 2003, christened with a traditional Incan ceremonial bridge blessing, and is now in extremely good condition.﻿

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is the public library of Derby Line, Vermont and Stanstead, Quebec. It sits right on the US-Canadian border. In fact, a black line across the floor marks the division. You enter the lovely turn-of-the-century building in Vermont, but you check out the books in Quebec. And, the librarian who assists you may be either a citizen of the United States or Canada, or both and, probably bilingual. The building and its facilities are governed by a seven-member board of trustees — four Americans and three Canadians — who serve without pay.

May 18, 2011

Possibly you’ve seen this strange picture of President Obama and his wife Michelle holding hands -with an extra hand. Many people assumed the picture was the victim of Photoshop, but Chicago Tribune photojournalist Alex Garcia has posted an explanation and the rest of the photo sequence:

The iconic “Mudflap Girl”, long seen on America’s highways, finally has an identity. Ed Allen of Washington, D.C. says that it’s his mother. Allen’s father, a trucker, kept a photo of his wife wearing a swimsuit in his rig.

"Dad kept the photo in the cab of his truck, which always bore mom's name on the hood," said Allen.

When a new corporate owner forbade Stewart from decorating a company-owned vehicle, Stewart put his wife’s silhouette on his trailer’s mudflaps so his boss couldn’t see her when the truck was backed up to a loading dock.

In 1967, Ed Allen said that a local truck-accessories manufacturer named Bill Zinda saw the design. He liked it and, with Allen's permission, started selling it. No one ever trademarked the image, and Mudflap Girl got around a lot during the freewheeling ’70s.

Aah, the Royal Wedding. A grand occassion where joy was had by all. Well, almost all.

Grace van Cutsem, age 3, was the daughter of Lady Rose Astor and Hugh van Cutsem, a close friend of William and Harry. She was the cute flower girl that stole the show by tellin’ it like it was in this photo that went viral ’round the Web.

May 13, 2011

For those of us who owned the original 1989 Nintendo Game Boy nothing is more exciting and nostalgic then playing some of those green and yellow video game classics of our youth. GameBoyOnline.com claims to have over 800 games that you can play in the browser without downloading an emulator. I know what I’m doing at work today...rescuing that Princess once and for all!

May 9, 2011

I’m having trouble finding any information about this video. It appears to show a performer balancing sticks, one on top of another, without dropping a single one. At the very end, he must balance the entire assembly on one remaining, upright stick. Amazing to see!

May 3, 2011

Gotta love it! These officers from the U.S. Civil War wore their beard, mustache, mutton chops or sideburns with pride. Smithsonian.com has a poll where you can choose your favorite and learn more about the military career of each of the contestants.

Apr 26, 2011

Apparently, this is a vending machine at a petting zoo from which people can buy treats to feed the animals. But this clever girl has figured out how to “tap” into it herself! Despite the name of the video, this is actually a female sheep (according to an employee who works there).

Almost five years ago, Autoblog Green reported on a "Stretch Batmobile" concept being developed by the Dutch that was intended to one day be used for public transportation. Now, that concept has been realized.

The Superbus is completely electric, seats 23 people and rides in a dedicated lane to get its passengers where they need to go. Oh, and it goes 155 MPH. Designed by Dutchman Wubbo Ockels, a former astronaut and professor of aerospace sustainable engineering and technology, the realized Superbus was presented to a group of Dutch teenagers. Check it out in action in this video.

Saudi Arabia’s proposed Kingdom Tower will rise to 5,280 feet. That’s a full mile. If completed, this building in Jeddah will cost $30 billion to build and will contain apartments, hotel rooms, and offices in its 12 million cubic feet of space. The graphic compares the structure to the Petronis Tower (center) in Malaysia and the Empire State Building (left) in the US. Currently, the tallest building in the world is Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which is 2,700 feet tall.